"If men liked shopping, they’d call it research." Cynthia Nelms

          Shopping is worse than travel because it is not easily avoided.  Sometimes one has to go shopping 3 or 4 times a week.  Shopping involves moving which – as I’ve already explained – makes you feel old. 

Grocery shopping for me is such a pain that I plan it in detail – which aisles, can size, flavor of cookies, possible substitutes, etc.  For each 15 minutes of grocery shopping, and I rarely spend more than 15 minutes, I spend 45 minutes of planning.  You can sit still and plan.  Grocery stores should make available a gizmo that, as you made your grocery list, the gizmo would arrange the list in the same order as they appear in the aisles.  You wouldn’t have to backtrack.  I might try to learn to use a piece of technology like that.  Imagine not having to read a grocery list each time you entered a new aisle searching for scattered items.  The gizmo would say “Aisle 6 – dried prunes on the left hand side in the middle, pabulum on the right near the end.”  Why hasn’t that been invented?  If we can go to the moon, why…oh, never mind.

Besides grocery shopping there is – horror of horrors – shopping for clothes.  Luckily I don’t have to do as much of that as I used to.  When you’re gainfully employed you worry more about your attire.  Will I have to dig a ditch in the mud?  Does this tie go with this shirt?  That type of thing.  When you’re retired it’s a great relief to find that bathrobes last a long time.  My wife insists on accompanying me when I shop for clothes.  She says my color coordination isn’t the best.  (I have some color blindness.)  Her being along means that a 5 minute trip to buy a new suit, 3 dress shirts, 6 pairs of shorts, a pair of loafers, and 4 pairs of socks can stretch into a half hour.  “Honey, try these shorts.  Michael looks so good in them.”

My wife, I notice, likes to shop.  She doesn’t make a list but just wanders the aisles looking and looking.  The lack of a list means that she can buy anything she wants.  She’s free.  After several hours of shopping, as she’s checking out, she sometimes finds it’s all in vain because she has forgotten her credit card.  But she’s not upset at all.  In fact, she says it’s probably for the best because she didn’t want any of the stuff anyway.  We try to avoid shopping together.

Every few years we have to buy a new car.  Last time was when our Edsel’s left rear fender rusted off.  We – my wife likes this approach - have made a science of it.  We shop by looking at reviews in the popular consumer magazines.  We know what we want – something made for old farts.  We compare the options available.  Does one have to hand crank to start it?  We’re getting too old for that.  Most have gotten rid of the spark advance as well – a pity.  We look at the price.  After we decide what we want, we get the print out of the dealer’s cost of the car and each of the options.  We walk into our local dealer and wave the printout about.  Most of the salespeople disappear and then we casually walk around looking at the most expensive vehicles on the showroom floor.  That usually tempts a junior sales associate out of their cubicle and they say the fateful words, “Can I help you?”

An hour later we have signed a sales contract – giving the dealer a respectful, but not exorbitant profit – and have a two-week wait.  No dealer ever has exactly the car with the color and options we want but they locate a dealer in Outer Mongolia that does and they have to ship it in.  The first time I drive a new car is after I’ve bought it.  The hardest thing to learn is how to turn on the wipers.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch

"Technology…the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it." Max Frisch

      Change is a terrible thing.  One gets used to the way things are and then it changes and nowhere is this evident than in technology.  I remember (I think) the awe I felt when the rotary dial was replaced with push buttons.  Could life get simpler than this?  Modern smartphones can microwave a pizza.  When you’re not old there is natural tendency left over from our infant days – not doubt implanted by evolution – to be curious about new things.  That’s how we learned to control fire and the ballot box.  But when you’re old, figuring out how a new gizmo works is labor, and besides you’re completely happy with the obsolete predecessor.  However, you recognize that a push button phone would cause derisive giggles from the grandkids in addition to the smirks generated by your bathrobe, so you strive to learn why the little line is blinking.

            But I think that for old farts the piece of new technology that is most baffling is the computer.  (My career was as a scientific programmer.)  As a volunteer for a couple of semesters I was part of the teaching staff at the local university that offered courses for “senior citizens” in computers.  In that role, the question I dreaded most was, “Do I single click or double click?”  I wanted to scream, “TRY ONE AND THEN TWO!”  It’s not Einstein’s theory.  (I’m a physicist.)  But I may be unjust.  The truth is I don’t know the answer.  My fingers just seem to have the knowledge built in.  I don’t even think about it.  It’s like Michael Jordon shooting a basketball.  If you have to think, you’ve failed.  Michael looks better in shorts than I do, however.  I've never seen him in a bathrobe.

There is a popular misconception among the mature that a computer is really a bomb just waiting for a particular sequence of keystrokes before exploding and destroying all life on earth.  This misconception comes from an overdose of Road Runner cartoons in our formative years.  So, the belief is, one should always hesitate before a particular sequence and ask, “Have I done this sequence before?”  If not, it could be the trigger.  “And why is that little line blinking?  Is it trying to goad me further?”  “ Instead of using email maybe I could just telephone the kids?  Ah, but my phone is busy microwaving my pabulum, so – ‘Do I single click or double click?’”  Those were tough courses to teach.

But old dogs can learn new tricks and we “senior citizens” (Are there sophomore citizens?) have learned more than we realize.  Take microwaves, for example.  Did our mothers ever cook with a microwave?  Most of us can use a microwave – especially if there is only one button.  And high-definition-digital-TV-over-broadband coupled to a blu-ray player.  Well OK, maybe some of us are behind the curve on that one, but wait and we’ll all be aces if it sticks around.  I think the argument can be made that we old farts are just being prudent and waiting to see if the new technology will linger.  Microwaves have earned their stripes but remember (as I do, I think) 8 track tapes, 5 ¼” floppies and zip drives?  Why waste our time learning about something that’ll see the setting sun before we do?

Changes also work the other way.  Many things that were very useful and completely adequate disappear – or almost.  Drive-in theaters are one.  What technology replaced them?  There was no better milieu to share with a date on a weekend night - except, perhaps the cemetery.  You’re all alone in a confined space.  Nothing could replace that.  Seatbelts would’ve helped but they hadn’t been invented yet.

Vacuum tubes were great.  I know transistors and printed circuits have replaced them, but a vacuum tube caused problems the ordinary person could fix.  There was a real feeling of accomplishment in taking the back off of some gigantic electronic gizmo, removing a few tubes and checking them at the local drug store  (Every drug store of any merit had a tube checker.), to find one was bad, replacing it and have the gizmo work again.  You felt like a man returning from the hunt dragging a woolly mammoth.  When was the last time you took a printed circuit to a drug store?  Some changes are definitely for the worse.

Speaking of drug stores, what happened to the drug store with a counter where you could order a strawberry soda?  Where did they go?  You could see the clerk make it – not pull a prepackaged factory manufactured object out of a freezer.  Sometimes the clerk was a not-old lass.  However, you might have to mow the neighbor’s lawn to get the quarter to pay for the treat.

There will be more great inventions and technology in the future.  Someone will dream up a way one can use a camera without hooking it to a computer.  It may even have the film inside and after you take the shot the photo will eject automatically and you can have the finished picture right in your hand wherever you are - no cables, no software to install and you don’t have to worry about the computer printer having enough ink or the right kind of paper.  That would be nice.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch

"Journey over the entire universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst." Cervantes

            My wife likes to travel.  (I’m married.)  Not just to the grocery store but to Outer Mongolia.  Nothing gives her more joy (I’m sad to say) than to plan such a trip in the minutest detail.  Does she want coffee or tea on the morning of the fifth day in Ulan Bator?  But I learned a long time ago that for a woman, having a man along, means that there is a handy person to carry the luggage.  The first time my wife went on one of her excursions alone, she packed only 12 suitcases instead of her normal 38.  When I asked her why, her reply was, “You don’t expect me alone to carry 38 do you?”  She returned from the trip quite as she had left so I guess the 26 dregs weren’t missed.

            I must also admit that I, in my old age, miss the point of travel.  It seems like an awful waste of energy and money and to what purpose?  I’m not talking about trips to visit grandchildren, mind you.  I’m talking about trips akin to seeing the biggest ball of string in the world or some such like.  If one wants to see all of that string, one can sit at home and with a few keystrokes bring a photo up on the computer and, all the while, sip a pinot noir and not move or haul luggage or be subjected to the sight of exotic pretty females parading back and forth…and back and forth…and….  But I digress.

For those not old, travel may broaden.  You get to hear a foreign language besides Spanish.  Some of the architecture is different and opens up your mind to the vast horizons of human creativity - or something like that.  But for the old, your mind doesn’t need to be opened.   A closed mind is more the norm.  There’s too much stuff crammed into it already.  Besides if it were important you’d’ve already learned it.  So we can safely rule out education as the reason to travel.

What remains - culinary arts?  Have you ever eaten a steamed Amur sturgeon after being marinated in the extract of Adonis mongoloca as prepared by the greatest Xiongnu chef?  I haven’t either.  Such a meal is not on my bucket list and I doubt if I’ll miss it as I lay on my deathbed.  Besides, I like to cook.  It’s fun to try to get an exotic dish right after 2 or 3 tries.  OK, sometimes it’s 5 or 6.  There’s a feeling of accomplishment and you didn’t have to go half way around the world.  There’s no luggage to carry to the kitchen either.  And the pretty women – oh, never mind.  Alas, my local grocery doesn’t carry either Amur sturgeon or Adonis mongoloca but I can use tilapia and vanilla.  Experience gathered from life enables you to make do with what you have.

My wife tells me that she meets the most interesting people on her travels.  She’s led a sheltered life.  If she’d allow me to repeat my stories I could be interesting, too.  But as soon as I start telling a story, she says, “Oh, not #87 again!”  And the few times I’ve been shanghaied to go – for example – on a cruise, most of our companions have been old people.  Gad.  Old people can be interesting but they get boring when they try to tell other people why they’re interesting – and most of them do.  They – like children – should be quiet until spoken to.  Let the questioner lead the old fart along the interesting trails of their human experience.  It works better that way.  But old people have the annoying habit of interjecting their opinion on things like politics, racism, religion, and their grandkids.  The questioner, if allowed, can pose questions on important matters like, “Was the first time you had sex in a haystack?”  Cruises are a waste of time.  No one talks about haystacks.

©2014 Lester C. Welch

"I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old." Charles Baudelaire

            Memories are the most significant thing we create in our lives.  Of course, they have meaning only to us.  The memory of our first kiss  would sound ludicrous to anyone else, but to us, it’s a short trip to heaven.  The courage we were able to find – the lack of a scream on her part – the moisture of her lips – the furtive glance to see if anyone else was in the cemetery – the memory can’t be replicated.

            Many of us have memories of our wedding – the birth of our children – our first big promotion.  Late at night, as we try to get back to sleep after returning from the bathroom, we relive those events.  We hold the infant that turned into such a rebellious teenager.  We revisit our wedding day when we gazed upon our new spouse (generally not our first love) who, it turned out, believed it was nature’s order that man’s duty was to take out the garbage.  Who could’ve guessed it?  The big promotion led to – six months later – your taking the blame for the failure of a project that you didn’t even know existed.  But you took the blame and survived.  Take one for the team.

            At some point, generally after discussing past family events with relatives, you begin to question the validity of your memories.  Others – who were there – remember things much differently.  They don’t remember your dousing Aunt Bertha’s wig with a quart of martinis in a heroic effort to extinguish the flames ignited when she got too close to the candles on top of the cake for Uncle Jack’s 75^th birthday.  They have a vision of Aunt Bertha taking off the wig and stomping on it without any involvement from you.  How could all 8 of them be so wrong?  But, back to the point.

            One must be leery of memories.  A popular psychiatric theory is that memories can be suppressed.  With a great deal of effort, a skilled therapist can bring these subterranean memories to the surface or, as cynics would suggest, be created.  If, indeed, memories can be sublimated does it not follow that memories can also be manufactured? How do you know if that first kiss ever happened?  Maybe you just wish that it had and over the decades, that wish was cemented in your cerebellum.  Maybe your entire life is a created memory.

            Well be that as it may, it is all we have to work with.  I’d take an aspirin if I thought it would work.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch

"The more things change, the more they stay the same." Alphonse Karr

This chapter contains great thoughts.  I assume that in our dotage we can pretend to have great thoughts.  Why let all of that experience go to waste?  What is also assumed is that the ownership of these great thoughts is not in dispute.  Your great thoughts are yours (and probably wrong) and my great thoughts are mine and show enormous insight.

I, modestly, propose a concept that has, hitherto now, an unrecognized significance - which is "sociological inertia."  The heart of the idea is that society resists change because of the vast investment of current resources in maintaining status quo.  For example, the oil industry employs hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people.  From oil well riggers to service station owners to top executives.  If - overnight - we could replace the oil industry with a "green" technology all of those people would have their careers and lives uprooted.  Those people would be very unhappy regardless whether or not such a change would benefit the world or not.  That unhappiness would translate into political pressure to maintain things as they are.  Lobbyists would get hired to influence congress and money would get spread around.  TV ads would appear. 

An oil well rigger loses his/her professional identity and expertise if he/she is expected to install solar panels.  He would turn himself from a seasoned veteran on the well to a rookie on the roof.  The Vice-President of Research at a gigantic oil company knows all about petroleum products, refining, and the geology of slate but knows nothing (most probably) about semi-conductor response to ultra-violet light. Both, of course, are going to maintain that an increase in oil production in America is the way to go.

 Similarly, those hard workers involved in the health care insurance business will resist any alteration because their careers and knowledge is based on the current system.  They know that a particular insurance company needs triplicates of everything and doesn’t like staples – just paper clips.  Who could guess what evil things a single payer system would require?  It can’t be good.  It matters not that a big change could vastly improve functionality - it would adversely affect their lives, thus, in their view, it must be bad.

What ever happened to the professional horse buggy makers when automobiles were introduced?  The transition in that technology took about the time of a career - 30 years.

So things don't change for the better not because of the lack of merits of any alteration, but because change would wipe out the importance and significance of many people’s lives.  Thus change within a component of our infrastructure happens slowly with the time frame of a career. 

New things have an easier time of it.  They don’t have to supplant anything immediately.  They sneak up – as the web is doing to printed media – and take it over.  That certainly was not the purpose of the web in the beginning.

Arguments and discussion about the merits of change is blowing in the wind - there is too much sociological inertia in keeping things the way they are.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch

Commenting made easier

I've changed the setting concerning commenting.  It should be easier now.

"Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated." Will Rogers

From time-to-time, I'll include a political comment - often a recently submitted letter-to-the editor.  I do so because I believe that whether you're retired and/or grumpy, you should stay involved in the political process to make sure all of those young non-retired (hence, productive) happy folks don't rule everything.  The following is the first of what will be a small proportion of all postings,

.....

          The view of a corporation as a person, - a decisive element in the “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” ruling of the Supreme Court – was significantly enhanced in 1886 when corporations became "natural persons" under the law, sheltered by the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. It started in California in a court case titled "Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad and later upheld by the Supreme Court.

          If “Citizens United” is to over turned, the view that corporations are persons protected by the constitution has to be debunked.  A significant step in that direction would be to eliminate corporate income tax.

          I know that this step has very little support - especially among liberals - but some thought would reveal its wisdom in several ways:

·        Any taxes on corporations is just part of the cost of business and is passed on to the consumer making the goods/services more expensive.

·        Corporations hire lobbyists to promote loopholes to avoid paying taxes and succeed admirably.  One out of four corporations pay no income tax,

·        Corporations furnish only 10% of the federal tax revenue.

·        Paying no income tax means fewer lawyers, accountants and lobbyists thus also reducing the cost of business.

·        Lowering the cost of business means that American made goods are more competitive than foreign made.  This means higher wages, lower unemployment and a higher gross national product (GNP).

·        But most importantly, a cornerstone of the argument that corporations should be allowed to contribute financially to politics is destroyed.  If corporations financially contribute to the running of the government, they logically have a right to participate in the political process.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch

"I feel as old as yonder elm." James Joyce.

            One of the most significant discoveries I made in my advanced years is exactly the cause of my “feeling old.”  When I moved, I felt old.  When I walk my joints would ache, my back would tighten, and my breathing would get more strained.  If I sat still none of those things would happen.  Exercise was the big culprit.  After exercise I always felt old, so I cut that out entirely.  I can sit in front of my computer playing games or writing down very astute thoughts for hours – not moving anything except my fingers on the keyboard – and not feel old at all.

            This revelation – the more I thought about it – made a lot of sense.  Why would evolution create an old person whose mobility was a source of discomfort except to discourage us from moving?  We’re not going to win a 100-meter dash or drive in the Daytona 500.  Even swinging a golf club (God forbid) can be painful.  Why do we need to move?  We should be the source – given our decades of experience – of great wisdom for the tribe.  We should be able to sit underneath the piñon tree (I was born and raised in New Mexico) and offer wise observations without even bothering to get up.  Things like – “You should replace the printer cartridge before you really need to print something.”

Besides, if you insist on keeping yourself fit, that just means when the grim reaper comes you’ll hang onto life longer – racking up those hospital bills and extracting resources from your family, friends, and neighbors.  Better to fail early and often.

Besides movement, a major source of feeling old is women.  Looking at a shapely lass walking by as you lean on your cane and drool on your bib is a real downer.  It brings back memories – many of which are, no doubt, fallacious, but still…  So don’t move and don’t look and you’ll avoid feeling old.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch

"Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future." Susan Sontag

            When you’re a lad and working, as time goes by, you become more and more relevant.  You gain experience and, often, stature in your company.  The old farts die off and you move up.  At the time of retirement, you’ve been working longer than any other time in your life.  Thus, you’re at the peak of your relevance.  You’ve never been more relevant than at the moment you hang it up.

            The next day you have zero relevance.  Nobody cares anymore what you think.  This is a shock to your ego – often subconsciously so.  Some old farts look under the sofa, “Where’s my relevance?  I’ve lost my relevance.”  After some fruitless time – months or years in some cases - searching for relevance, you may decide to look for it in volunteer work.  “Hell, it wasn’t the money I was working for.  It was the relevance.”  You find a suitable organization and start getting up at 6:00 in the morning twice a week to meet your duties.  You sort the paper clips and make sure the printer has paper.  It’s great!  The other workers get to know your name, “Hi, Joe.  Glad to see you.  I need a large paper clip.”  You’re relevant again.

There’s other ways you can get your relevance back.  You can try writing a book or a blog, but I wouldn’t recommend that.  None of them ever sell.  No one wants to read somthing written by some old fart.  What have we got to tell the world?

© 2014 Lester C. Welch

It's official - grumpiness starts at 70.

It's been studied and reported here.

"If I’m in a social situation sometimes I’ll hang back and observe people but I feel very much a part of things most of the time and feel very comfortable socializing and have for most of my life." Tobey Maguire

          Being old means you don’t socialize much with people who are not old and are still active and like to do things that make you feel old, so I don’t like to socialize now.  One’s potential circle of socializables is other old farts, but other old farts think they know everything and are very closed-minded.  I know because I’m one of them.  We’ve lived long enough so we’ve had plenty of time to think things through and reach the wrong conclusion about almost everything.

We’ve also lived long enough to know that certain topics are off limits.  Religion and politics are the prime examples.  What are fashionable, of course, are discussions about operations, doctors, enemas, X-rays, MRIs, bone problems, prescriptions, skin blotches, hair loss, digestive systems, colonoscopies, heart valves and arteries, urinary tract infections, hearing aides, and cataracts.  Those are just a small sample, but you get the idea.   These topics can fill hours of a dull evening lubricated by gallons of martinis.  From these discussions, I think I’ve learned enough to be able to do a complete medical diagnosis for most complaints and in some cases do the surgery needed to fix the problem.  It’s a living hell, I tell you.  When you’re not old, “Take an aspirin and call me in the morning if it doesn’t get better” often suffices.

So, with these topics to anticipate, I cringe when an invitation to a party or a dinner if forth coming.  But I usually go after checking my bathroom medicine cabinet to re-acquaint myself with my prescriptions – and, of course, my blood pressure and the color of my stools.

Another disturbing aspect about socializing with old farts is we tend to repeat ourselves.  We tell the same damn story over and over.  I know I’m guilty of this as well.  The problem is that you can’t remember to whom you have told which story.  My children are fond of interrupting me, “Dad, that’s story # 118.”  (I have two sons.)  But as long as I hear a story and recognize it as a repeat I don’t worry about having Alzheimer’s.  If I go to a social gathering and all of the stories are new, interesting and funny, then I know I’m on the downward spiral because it’s most probable that I just don’t recognize what I’ve heard before.  So repeating a story is just a tool for others to do a sanity check.

I remember (I think) I enjoyed socializing when I was not old.  Get together with some friends – drink a few beers, have a BBQ, trade barbs.  Perhaps, a friend had just been shopping for a trailer hitch and one could learn something from his experience.  Size, cost.  It was all interesting stuff.  Of course, I now realize that I’ve never bought a trailer hitch in my life, but I didn’t know then that I wouldn’t need that priceless knowledge.  Old farts never shop for trailer hitches.  If they need one, they pay someone to put it on.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch

"An elegant sufficiency, content, retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books." James Thomson

            To begin with, a common element among many of us is “retirement.”  Retirement plays a big role in the daily lives of most of us - I know it does in mine.  No more alarm clock getting us up at some ungodly hour to shave, have a quick cup of coffee and a glance at a newspaper before darting out the door.  OK, some of us also checked our email and social networking sites - but generally didn’t have enough time to do anything with them.  Some of us are even too old-fartish to have been distracted by such things.

            On a typical day during retirement we get up leisurely when we wish.  The coffee maker is on a timer because we aren’t really awake - even though we’re ambling about - until 10:30 or so.  No need to be.  No sense in shaving.  Nothing on our calendar requires it.  I generally run a brush through my hair so that if a neighbor sees me as I gather the newspaper, they won’t be frightened to death.  I happened, one morning, to glace in the mirror at myself uncombed.   It’s not a sight I want to inflict on anyone. 

            Often the decision as whether or not to change from our nightclothes to something more presentable is the toughest choice we’ll make all day.  This is quite a let down for some of us who are used to making decisions involving gobs of money each day.  Throwing on a bathrobe suffices for many purposes.  When the postal worker brings me the latest postage-due copy of “Old Farts Gazette” he/she expects to see me in my bathrobe.  Anything else would risk a 911 call.  But, most of us do take a shower every 3 or 4 days whether we need it or not.  Some veneer of civilized behavior is necessary.

            Breakfast is a habit I broke in college and have never seen reason to resume.  Without eating I could lie in bed until 7:55 and still make my 8:00 class in “Western Philosophy” during which I could get some more shut-eye.  (I was a science major.)  So without the necessity of a morning repast the day moves right along.

            In retirement the time immediately after coffee and the newspaper is critical – there’s another day to face.  Suicide?  I generally decide, “No.”  Before retirement, this time was a no-brainer.  You were on the job and there were, by definition, crises - otherwise it wouldn’t be a job.  Crises gave you something to think about, problems to be solved, the need to draw upon your expertise, strut your stuff.  Now all of that is gone.  The only problem is how to generate a problem to solve. 

            Whether you do some gardening today or tomorrow matters not an iota and no one thinks more or less of you for doing or not doing it.  “It’s nice to see the old fart out and about. “ All of us garden.  Now granted at one extreme, you can get together with others, generate a club, build a tree house, put out a sign that says “Members Only,” create labels such as “Greenest Thumb” and take pains to learn to recognize a pansy from a yucca.  But take it from me; the earth was probably at its best, plant-wise, long before there were gardeners.  But I like to garden when my hips, knees, elbows, back, sinuses, eyes, neck, shoulders, ankles, spleen and wrists cooperate.  It’s pretty easy to convince yourself that the spot you plant the hydrangea has world significance.

            Walking is a great way to kill time, if not yourself, but one has to be careful about the weather.  In the summer you have to walk early or late - certainly not in the heat of mid-day.  In the winter, mid-day sometimes is tolerable and the ideal time to walk, if there’s no snow or ice.  If it’s raining, you probably want to skip walking as well.  Also find a route with low traffic.  Often if you drive 20 or 30 miles you can find a city or state park specifically designed for walkers.  It can be fun to walk in the park if there are no bicycle riders around – or mean dogs – or gnats.  But, beware; walking can make you feel old.

            Golf is a favorite hobby among many retirees.  Not me.  I tried it a few times when I was less old but, at that time, I couldn’t afford losing the balls.  Plus, I was working so the times available to me were limited.  On a beautiful Saturday morning a few thousand people waited to tee off.  But, I confess, I think the real reason I’ve avoided golf is I don’t see much sense to the game.  Some claim its good exercise, but it seems as if the most exercise is carrying a putter from the golf cart to the green – maybe twenty yards and a putter isn’t very heavy.  Often people don’t even have to carry the club back because they’ve thrown it into the lake.  But, beware; if golf is exercise, exercise can make you feel old.

            Others laud the game because it gets them outdoors to enjoy nature.  I find I can do that as well sitting on my patio drinking a pinot noir while watching birds at my feeder.  And I save a lot of money because I don’t have to buy new putters.  Some pinot noirs are pretty inexpensive.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch

"Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to man." Leon Trotsky

    Somehow, my life went by in a flash and now I find I am an old man. This realization has caused me to contemplate what role seemingly useless old men - or more specifically, I – am supposed to play. The truest bit of wisdom I discovered in this journey of introspection was that being old is a lot different than not being old. To clarify, I planned for retirement and, in fact, now have a comfortable living. But when I was planning for retirement I pictured myself as I looked and felt at – say – 40. I could see myself full of vim and vigor and enjoying complete leisure. But now that I’m old enough to be retired, I feel – well – old. A big disappointment.
A poignant question to consider is “Why do old men exist?” What good are we? The answer came to me one night, as I got up in the middle of darkness, following the night light into the bathroom.

Old farts are dispensable and that’s our reason for existence. Our uselessness is directly tied to getting up so frequently in the night. Think of hunter-gatherer tribes of 15,000 years ago. Imagine, at night while everyone was sleeping soundly under a woolly mammoth hide, the old guy has to take a leak. He gets up and stumbles out to the woods. If there are monsters or rival tribes lurking out there he is the first to discover them. He screams and wakes the others before being dispensed with. His family and friends are saved because he had to take a piss. His offspring form the next generation. Thus evolution favored the genetics of old guys who had to take a leak in the middle of the night. He’s already passed on his sperm and the less old guys are still screwing. He’s not needed anymore. What the hell, Mother Nature says; the more often he has to get up, the better.

       So now that we understand why we old farts exist, it seems reasonable to explore some of the predicaments of old age for guys like us. I originally entitled my blog “For Old Farts,” but then I pictured myself reading the blog with that title in polite society and decided that something more acceptable might sell better. Besides there may be a couple of people in the world who wouldn’t categorize me so. Thinking of the legacy that I want to leave my offspring and their offspring it seemed more prudent to find a suitable alternative. But keep in mind; the real title is “For Old Farts.”

Another possibility for a title would be a complete camouflage job like “Finding your Spiritual Being with an Enlarged Prostate” but even that seemed an affectation. It might appeal to the “new agers,” but there aren’t many of that crowd among old farts. Besides do women speak of ovaries and uteri? Well, maybe they do, but that doesn’t mean we have to follow their lead. After considerable contemplation, a reasonable choice seemed to be, “For the Older Gentleman.” Surely that can’t be offensive and may have enough panache attract attention here and there. I also figure there won’t be much competition. Most old farts are too demented to be able to write. It’s sort of analogous to writing a blog entitled “My Struggles with Illiteracy.” Of course, some of us are demented enough to think we can write.  Modesty has never been one of my sins.

     And talking about writing, I, herein, often make sweeping social generalizations. I think such is necessary to convey thoughts and have a discussion. There are, of course, many exceptions and counter-examples to any generalization and my pronouncements are not presented as universal truths. So don’t challenge me by asking, “What about…?” My word is indisputable. It’s my blog.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch